Take Austin Power’s Advice and Behave!

Who would have thought that Austin Power’s would be a role model for realizing your full potential, but it is true nonetheless as we can see from this guest post offering from our friend Hans.

Contributed by Hans | hans@hansyoga.com | hansyoga.com

A very simple way to put all of these together is “Learn to behave”.

Simple words, a vast spectrum of meanings as you will see.

Before we understand right behavior with others, we have to learn right behavior with our own selves.  The world is our extended self.  If I want to get along with others, I must first learn to get along with myself. Now, to get along with myself, I have to know myself.  Most of us are 'strangers' unto ourselves - how can one get along with a stranger?

In the scriptures of my homeland in India, we compare human beings with a chariot with 5 horses.  The 5 sense-faculties (of seeing, tasting, hearing, smelling and touching) are the 5 steeds, wayward and unruly, running amuck towards the sense-objects.  To control them, we have a rein which is our sensory mind.  It is called the lower mind (Manas) because its domain is just two-fold, "I like it" and 'I don't like it".  It is pleasure-driven, being sense-enslaved.

The rein is necessary but not enough.  There must be an able charioteer to hold fast the reins.  He is our higher mind - the reason, the discerning or discriminating faculty.  It is called Buddhi in Sanskrit.  Its domain extends to deciding whether what is pleasant is also good, and whether the unpleasant things the lower (sensory) mind is rejecting, could actually be good for us. 

The creamy cake may look temptingly pleasant to the diabetic, but reason tells him it is bad.  Early morning walks look so unpleasant, so unthinkable, but if you make it, you are empowering by discriminating reason, that which eventually benefits you. When anger comes on, you want to slap the other person, but reason tells you to hold.

Let us see what right behavior means at various levels of our being - Physical, Mental, Emotional, Intellectual & Spiritual, etc.

RIGHT BEHAVIOR FOR YOUR BODY

Your body is not you, you have it but you are not the body.  Treat it like a good employer would treat his employee.  Giving it its rightful dues, but not pampering it.  For example, when you want to eat, find out whether it's your body's genuine need (appetite) or your mind's endless desire (greed).  When the body feels tired, find out if it is actually fatigued from over-work or just being lazy, and so on.

A saint called his body 'brother donkey'.  Indeed, the body is the animal in us, our dear beast of burden.  Since our aim is to love all, we cannot ignore the body, but we have to remember to treat it wisely - without cruelty, without indulgence.

RIGHT BEHAVIOR FOR THE MIND

The mind is a drunken, drugged and devil-possessed monkey, unless we learn to control it.  The body is much simpler in comparison.  We can dominate the body through will.  But managing the mind monkey is not a game of just will power.  We need wisdom - a wisdom-guided will.  For example, if you order the mind not to think any more a particular thought that it has been chattering about, it is unlikely to obey unless you know the subtle rules. 

Why is it so difficult to control the mind? If you know the reason, you will know the cure.  The reason is, the sensory mind is hyper-active and restless by nature.  The mind's restless habits of thought and action get programmed or hard-wired in the brain which is the seat of energy or life-force (Pranayama).  The brain then drives further reactive actions. 

My Master (Paramahansa Yogananda, author of 'Autobiography of a Yogi') explains that the energy in the brain is spent in various bodily functions like blood circulation, breathing (movements of diaphragm), digestion, chemicalization, excretion etc., but that most of its energy is wasted in processing our useless or misguided thoughts, feelings and emotions that our big brother mind indulges in.

If somehow the mind's excessive energy (energy is where the consciousness is), routed through the brain,  can be regulated  and harnessed, not only will the monkey-mind get quieter, there will be energy available for so many worthy tasks.  So we have an energy crisis at micro-level too! 

This taming of energy or life-force (Prana) is called Pranayama in Yoga which is a marvelous super-science for body-mind-soul harmony, but many in the West think Yoga is just about some Yoga postures for bodily cure.  Yoga is about mind technology, which then permits tapping the soul-resources.

We must raise our self-awareness that gives us valuable feedback about our conduct.  We can then learn to be, as my Master taught me, "Calmly Active & Actively Calm".  We can then work smart, not just hard which even donkeys can do.

Emotions are Ego in MOTION.  They are not our highest faculty; even animals have emotions, but they have no guiding reason, no self-awareness and hence no self-control.  They have no wisdom which is much higher than reason.

Thoughts shape our destiny.  They create our outer and inner conditions. By Yogic mind management, we can choose right thoughts and thereby create right conditions.  The Law of Attraction is based on this. 

Questions are welcome from readers.  It is a vast and interesting subject, that has power to transform humans and through their optimization, it can optimize workplaces.  Stephen Covey rightly says that the way we look at the problems IS the problem.  We need to have holistic perceptions. Life's highest truths are the simplest.   There is too much of intellectual jargon in modern management.  We need wisdom, we need values and we need self-management.  You don't need to manage people, just empower them to manage themselves. 

Please browse http://www.hansyoga.com or write to me at hans@hansyoga.com to know more. 

Have a good day!